Method for producing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef vacuum packed in a plastic tray, equipment and end product

ABSTRACT

The present invention is directed to a method for producing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray, a method especially developed to avoid the refrigeration of the packed beef that is processed and prepared to be supplied to the consumer stable and ready to be consumed at room temperature to the consumer, and therefore it is a product that does not require any sort of special care for keeping its original characteristics, does not require any refrigeration and is ready to be consumed, and it should only have to be heated.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION

1. Technical Field

The present invention is directed to a method for producing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray, said method being especially developed to avoid the refrigeration of the packed beef, that is, which is produced to be supplied steady and ready to be consumed at room temperature, therefore, it is a product that does not require any sort of special care for keeping its original characteristics, does not require any refrigeration, and is ready to be consumed, and it should only have to be heated conventionally (stove, oven or microwave).

2. Background of the Invention

Recently, the industry of consumption products realized that the acceleration of the modern life, caused by new technologies, created a new consumer who is basically characterized by the lack of time.

Without having enough time to feed correctly due to the complex working schedule and complementary tasks such as study, body fitness, specialized courses and so on, this new consumer has created changes of behavior, habits and attitudes that are not necessarily accompanied by the state of the art industries, that, by adjusting or creating new products, focus on the needs of this consumer without enough time for anything.

Thus, it is that in the food industry, particularly, several products have been devised, such as the coffee that is heated in the can it is contained into, by depressing a button in the bottom one of the package, among others. In fact, there are tens of examples of package that fulfill the consumer needs, such as products and packages generated by the feeling of “not eating food correctly” that this type of consumption provokes in the people. This feeling has brought forth an excessive increase of the consumption of ready to be consumed natural or semi-natural products, or prepared in such a way that they can be easily preparation at home, office or any other place, for example, by using microwave.

However, especially food manufacturers and producers also know that one of the highest requirements of the consumers is the fact that the “ready-made dishes”, after being prepared (heated in an regular oven or a microwave oven) by the consumer, should have characteristics as close as possible to those of a recently prepared meal, that is, having a flavor equivalent to that of the dishes the consumer himself/herself prepares at home, without the so-called ‘industrial flavor’.

For the manufacturers of the “ready-made” food products, another required condition is the need to refrigerate and/or freeze the products throughout the whole chain, from the manufacture, transportation and storage to the exposition for sale, thus aiming at assuring the maintenance of the original characteristics and quality of the same, delaying the microbiologic, enzymatic and physical-chemical degradation process. Without the above-mentioned cold chain, most of the ready-made products become improper for consumption in a short while.

Thus, worried about the ever-growing ready-made food market, the manufacturers have been trying to associate practicability to the nutritional quality in one and the same product, mainly assuring the preservation factors of the same, from the moment they are manufactured to the moment they are delivered to the consumer.

Still available in the state of the art and in the sense of presenting packages that can be preserved without refrigeration, the consuming public has already being allowed to use packages that are made of a partially or fully transparent flexible material known as “pouches”, designed to pack meat under vacuum, so that the products are preserved at room temperature for a long time. This “pouch”, already widely used all over the world, means reduction in the cost of transport and storage. However, as an inconvenient, this type of package, in view of using vacuum, many times compresses the product in such a way that it is visually deformed, thus interfering with the commercial appeal.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

After analyzing the state of the art and the needs of the market, the applicant, operating in the area of food products, has developed a new method for manufacturing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray, said method being especially developed to avoid the refrigeration of the packed beef, that is, produced to be supplied stable and ready to be consumed at room temperature.

In a way to better elucidate the objects of this invention, a summary of the steps related to the method in question is given below, to be detailed later on: a) receiving the raw meat; b) receiving the inputs; c) lung chamber; d) grounding; e) refrigeration silo; f) seasoning mixing; g) Roaster; h) X-rays; i) weighing and packaging; j) sterilization and incubation; k) Cooling; and 1) secondary packaging.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

To complement the present description in order to get a better understanding of the characteristics of the present invention and in accordance with a preferred practical accomplishment thereof a set of drawings is attached to the present specification, wherein the following is represented in an exemplary but not limiting way:

FIG. 1 illustrates the flowchart of the novel method.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is related to a new method for producing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray, and more particularly the manufacturing method comprises the following steps;

1) Receiving the meat: the products come from duly qualified agencies and are certified by the government agency responsible therefor; the meat is examined by Federal Inspectors and then by a duly qualified quality control employee of the company; the inspections are carried out in a suitable environment for such inspection in accordance with international standards; the whole inspection is duly recorded in time sheets and checked by qualified superiors for such purpose, wherein:

1.1) the hygiene and temperature conditions of the vehicle duly able and qualified for the transportation of such refrigerated are checked, as well as the hygiene conditions and the packages thereof, wherein the meat is first subject to a qualitative evaluation of the raw meat, where the following is verified:

1.1.1) the receiving of the meat duly conditioned in plastic packages bearing the information on the producer.

1.1.2) the manufacture and expiration dates.

1.1.3) the integrity of the packages.

1.1.4) the odor, color, appearance must have the same characteristics as those of fresh meat.

1.2) the temperature, pH and fat content must fulfill the following standards:

1.2.1) Safety limit: −2° C.<T<8° C.

1.2.2) Safety limit: 5.4<pH<5.9

1.3) Fat content: should be between 5% and 13%

2) Receiving the inputs: every time the inputs are received, the same as when the fresh raw meat is received, first by Federal Inspectors, and then by the quality control employees of the company duly qualified for this task; the inspections are carried out in a suitable environment for such inspection in accordance with international standards; the whole inspection is duly recorded in time sheets and checked by qualified superiors for such purpose by examining, among others;

2.1) the dirtiness, rips and punctures in the packages, the supplier's analysis report among others. The packages of every lot received are identified and numbered sequentially; the package weight is checked at random.

3) Lung chamber: the plastic packages that wrap the meat are removed and placed in closed carts and then taken to a suitable section wherein such packages are compacted and discarded in accordance with the sanitary and ambient standards in force; the raw meat is then conditioned in white plastic boxes, coated with a plastic bag in accordance with the effective sanitary standards in force and then sent to be stored in refrigerating chambers; the storage of the boxes containing the raw meat is organized inside the storage chamber by sorting same according to the dates they have been produced, in such a way that the meat bearing an older production date will always be used first; the amounts removed from the chambers will be the amounts required to fulfill the production schedule only.

4) Re-inspection before the next step: the raw meat is removed from the storage chamber and directed to the grinding room; the temperature in the grinding room should be the ambient temperature varying between 5° C. and 9° C., through a temperature graphical recorder; before being used, the raw meat is sent to a re-inspection point where it the temperature, pH, color, odor, among others, are rechecked.

5) Grounding: after being re-inspected, the meat is taken to the grinder, still inside the white plastic boxes; the grinder is thoroughly made of stainless steel 304, with sanitary finishing; said grinder is also provided with equipment capable of separating the nerves and cartilage of the meat, thus resulting in a first quality product; after the meat is ground, it is continuously automatically transported on sanitary conveyors to the production room.

6) Baking of the meat: the ground meat is continuously automatically transported on sanitary conveyors to the cookers; the ground meat is subject to a previous baking in treated water for a minimum 8-minute period at the water boiling temperature (100° C.), said baking taking place through an internally heated conveying thread made of stainless steel 304, with devices for automatically adjusting the speed and temperature;

6.1) the water used in the meat baking process comes from artesian wells, samples of which are collected biweekly for laboratory analysis carried out simultaneously both in an official laboratory and in the company's laboratory, by professionals duly qualified and able to perform such task; after being captured in the artesian wells, said water is transferred to the company's reservoirs, where it is chlorinated through a chlorine dispenser, a model provided with a peristaltic pump; the water goes then toward a polishing filter, a polypropylene filter (a 50 micron filtering element), and then the water dechlorination process is started, through activated coal Gr (Removal of Chlorine through a coal filter) and then transferred to a polishing filter, a polypropylene filter (a 10 micron filter element); a number of controls are carried out while the water is treated, thus fulfilling all the effective regulations in force as well as all the internal programs, thus assuring a high quality product; between the analyses carried out, we have: Microbiological control of the output water; control of the active coal efficiency, among others;

7) Refrigeration silo: After being baked, the ground meat leaves the cooker, through an endless thread system made of stainless steel 304, with sanitary finishing, fulfilling the effective regulations in force, for a storage and refrigeration silo; already in this storage silo, the ground baked meat is cooled, by using a process of lateral forced ventilation, combined with a central exhaustion system, and through this combination of systems the ground baked loses its temperature quickly thus reducing its humidity without the appearance of condensation in the silo;

8) Mixing of seasonings: Soon after having been cooled and already having its humidity reduced to the lowest acceptable level, the product is transferred by gravity to a mixer, also made of stainless steel 304, with sanitary finishing, provided with load sensors, and thus being able to indicate precisely the amount ground meat inside the mixer; on the other hand, the load cells will interrupt immediately the product input inside the mixer, closing the gates of the silo when the optimum amount is reached, thus making it possible to add seasoning thereto; since it is a hygroscopic seasoning, the addition thereof is only possible thanks to the reduction of the humidity generated by the refrigeration silo;

8.1) the mixer (8) requires a CPU so that all the steps of this process for mixing the seasonings can be carried out very precisely, including, among same; Mixing Time, Propellers Speed, Propellers Reverse Time, Discharge Gates Opening Speed, Propellers Angle Shift for Discharging, among others; even when controlled by a CPU, the weighing and addition of seasonings are accompanied by a quality control employee and all the occurrences are recorded in a time sheet of occurrences and weight control;

9) Roaster: after the correct addition and mixing of seasonings to the ground, cooked and cooled beef, the mixer, through a system of gates, discharges said product into a storage silo, so that the even amounts of the product can be transferred through an endless thread system to the device that will roast the product, for the purpose of providing the product with the same appearance of a home-made product; in this step of the project, a tambler shaped device is used, which device is provided with an infrared lighting system, actuated by a CPU responsible for the control of all the variables, such, as for example: rotation of the tambler, power of the lights, speed and amount of the input air, speed and amount of the output air, among others. Thus, the precise color definition of the desired product can be attained; by the end of this process, after the product is subject to a second roaster that applies less power, the roasted appearance of the product is attained for good.

10) X-ray: Soon after the product leaves the roasting devices, it runs across an endless conveyor toward a NON-RADIOACTIVE X-ray device especially designed for food products, for the purpose of detecting possible objects with a mass different from that of the product, that is, said equipment is capable of detecting small pieces of: metal, plastic, bone, wood, etc., thus assuring that no strange material will join the product in the package.

11) Weighing and packaging of the product: Soon after the product is examined through the X-ray device, it is then transported on an endless conveyor to extremely precise automatic scales, wherein the correct amount of the product to be transferred to the packaging device is separated in a number of compartments.

11.1) After being weighed, the ground, cooked and seasoned beef is transferred by gravity, without any human contact, to the plastic trays, already in the correct amounts;

11.2) The sealing is strong enough to resist the autoclave process, the outer surface of the trays is made of polyester, thus making same stronger, and their inner surface that contacts the food is made of polypropylene, comprising a strong oxygen barrier therebetween, polyvinylidene chloride, EVOH or nylon; the polypropylene is pigmented with titanium oxide to prevent the passage of light and aluminum foil in place of PVDC;

12) Sterilization: the purpose of this step is to eliminate or reduce the occurrence of any danger to the food safety to acceptable levels, and for this reason its monitoring is of the utmost importance and necessary; during the step of sterilization, the temperature and the process time are recorded through constantly adjusted instruments; the product should reach a minimum inner temperature of 121,5° C. for a minimum 23 minute period; the autoclaves are also provided with a number of other precision devices that are required for the optimum sterilization process.

13) Cooling: the trays should be cooled quickly after the sterilization process, until they reach a minimum temperature of 35° C. in 5 ppm chlorinated water, so that they can retain heat enough to dry.

14) Incubation: after the cooling, samples of each lot at a ratio of 2 units per 1,000 units, are collected immediately to be incubated in rooms wherein the temperature and humidity, varying from 34° C. to 39° C. for a minimum 10 day period, are controlled, thus stimulating the growth of microorganisms that could be present in the event the sterilization process might have shown any type of failure; during this period, the quality control employees follow the process day after day by carrying out a detailed checking in each of the trays, assuring that they do not have any anomaly, such as: leak, swollen packages, etc.; the evidence of any abnormality requires the retention of the whole lot and collection of more samples of the lot retained that will have to be sent immediately for the laboratory analysis; after the confirmation of the commercial sterility, the quality control team, through a document, releases and authorizes the commercialization of these products.

15) Secondary Packaging: After the product is released by the quality control team, it is transported in cages to the secondary packaging room, where the trays are placed inside the display boxes that will be used for the exposition and sale of the products.

The packages show the following flowchart in relation to the procedure:

A) primary packaging (included in step 11):

A1) receipt;

A2) inspection;

A3) storage;

A4) re-inspection before its application in step 11).

B) Secondary packaging (included in step 15);

B1) receipt;

B2) inspection;

B3) storage;

B4) re-inspection before its application in step 15).

The present method for manufacturing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray, such as disclosed in details hereinabove, avoids the refrigeration of the packed meat, being prepared to be supplied steady at room temperature, ready to be consumed, and, therefore, it is a product that does not require any sort of special care for keeping its original characteristics, dos not need any refrigeration and is ready to be consumed, and it should only have to be heated.

It is important to understand that the present invention does not limit its application to the details and steps described herein. Other embodiments are possible and it can be practiced or realized in a variety of ways, being understood that the purpose of the terminology used herein is of description and not restriction. 

1. A method for producing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray, equipment and end product, and more particularly the manufacturing method comprises the following steps: 1) Receiving the meat: the products come from duly qualified agencies and are certified by the government agency responsible therefor; the inspections are carried out in a suitable environment for such inspection in accordance with international standards; the whole inspection is duly recorded in time sheets and checked, wherein: 1.1) the hygiene and temperature conditions of the vehicle duly able and qualified for the transportation of such refrigerated are checked, as well as the hygiene conditions and the packages thereof, wherein the meat is first subject to a qualitative evaluation of the raw meat, where the following is verified: 1.1.1) the receiving of the meat duly conditioned in plastic packages bearing the information on the producer; 1.1.2) the manufacture and expiration dates; 1.1.3) the integrity of the packages; 1.1.4) the odor, color, appearance must have the same characteristics as those of fresh meat; 1.2) the temperature, pH and fat content must fulfill the following standards: 1.2.1) Safety limit: −2° C.<T<8° C. 1.2.2) Safety limit: 5.4<pH<5.9 1.3) Fat content: should be between 5% and 13% 2) Receiving the inputs: the inputs are inspected in a suitable environment for such inspection in accordance with international standards; the whole inspection is duly recorded in time sheets and checked by qualified superiors for such purpose by examining, among others; 2.1) the dirtiness, rips and punctures in the packages, the supplier's analysis report among others. The packages of every lot received are identified and numbered sequentially; the package weight is checked at random. 3) Lung chamber: the plastic packages that wrap the meat are removed and placed in closed carts and then taken to a suitable section wherein such packages are compacted and discarded in accordance with the sanitary and ambient standards in force; the raw meat is then conditioned in white plastic boxes, coated with a plastic bag and then sent to be stored in refrigerating chambers; the storage of the boxes containing the raw meat is organized inside the storage chamber by sorting same according to the dates they have been produced, in such a way that the meat bearing an older production date will always be used first; the amounts removed from the chambers will be the amounts required to fulfill the production schedule only; 4) Re-inspection before the next step: before being used in the next step, the raw meat is sent to a re-inspection point where it the temperature, pH, color, odor, among others, are rechecked; the raw meat is removed from the storage chamber and sent to the grinding room; 5) Grounding: the temperature in the grinding room should be the ambient temperature ranging from 5° C. to 9° C. shown in a graphical temperature recorder; after the meat is ground, it is continuously automatically transported on sanitary conveyors to the production room; 6) Baking of the meat: the ground meat is continuously automatically transported on sanitary conveyors to the cookers; the ground meat is subject to a previous baking in treated water for a minimum 8-minute period at the water boiling temperature (100° C.), said baking taking place in a continuous cooker; 6.1) preferably, the water used in the meat baking process comes from artesian wells; 7) Refrigeration silo: After being baked, the ground meat leaves the cooker, through an endless thread system made of stainless steel 304, with sanitary finishing; already in this storage silo, the ground baked meat is cooled, by using a process of lateral forced ventilation, combined with a central exhaustion system, and through this combination of systems the ground baked loses its temperature quickly thus reducing its humidity without the appearance of condensation in the silo; 8) Mixing of seasonings: Soon after having been cooled and already having its humidity reduced to the lowest acceptable level, the product is transferred by gravity to a mixer; already inside the mixer, the load cells will interrupt immediately the product input inside the mixer, closing the gates of the silo when the optimum amount is reached, thus making it possible to add seasoning thereto; since it is a hygroscopic seasoning, the addition thereof is only possible thanks to the reduction of the humidity generated by the refrigeration silo; 9) Roaster: after the correct addition and mixing of seasonings to the ground, cooked and cooled beef, the mixer, through a system of gates, discharges said product into a storage silo, so that the even amounts of the product can be transferred through an endless thread system to the device that will roast the product, for the purpose of providing the product with the same appearance of a home-made product; thus, attaining the precise color definition of the desired product; by the end of this process, after the product is subject to a second roaster that applies less power, the roasted appearance of the product is attained for good; 10) X-ray: Soon after the product leaves the roasting devices, it runs across an endless conveyor toward a NON-RADIOACTIVE X-ray device especially designed for food products, for the purpose of detecting possible objects with a mass different from that of the product, that is, said equipment is capable of detecting small pieces of: metal, plastic, bone, wood, etc., thus assuring that no strange material will join the product in the package; 11) Weighing and packaging of the product: Soon after the product is examined through the X-ray device, it is then transported on an endless conveyor to extremely precise automatic scales, wherein the correct amount of the product to be transferred to the packaging device is separated in a number of compartments; 11.1) After being weighed, the ground, cooked and seasoned beef is transferred by gravity, without any human contact, to the plastic trays, already in the correct amounts; 11.2) The sealing is strong enough to resist the autoclave process, the outer surface of the trays is made of polyester, thus making same stronger, and their inner surface that contacts the food is made of polypropylene, comprising a strong oxygen barrier therebetween, polyvinylidene chloride, EVOH or nylon; the polypropylene is pigmented with titanium oxide to prevent the passage of light and aluminum foil in place of PVDC; 12) Sterilization: the purpose of this step is to eliminate or reduce the occurrence of any danger to the food safety to acceptable levels, and for this reason its monitoring is of the utmost importance and necessary; during the step of sterilization, the temperature and the process time are recorded through constantly adjusted instruments; the product should reach a minimum inner temperature of 121,5° C. for a minimum 23 minute period; the autoclaves are also provided with a number of other precision devices that are required for the optimum sterilization process; 13) Cooling: the trays should be cooled quickly after the sterilization process, until they reach a minimum temperature of 35° C. in 5 ppm chlorinated water, so that they can retain heat enough to dry; 14) Incubation: after the cooling, samples of each lot at a ratio of 2 units per 1,000 units, are collected immediately to be incubated in rooms wherein the temperature and humidity, varying from 34° C. to 39° C. for a minimum 10 day period, are controlled, thus stimulating the growth of microorganisms that could be present in the event the sterilization process might have shown any type of failure; during this period, the quality control employees follow the process day after day by carrying out a detailed checking in each of the trays, assuring that they do not have any anomaly, such as: leak, swollen packages, etc.; the evidence of any abnormality requires the retention of the whole lot and collection of more samples of the lot retained that will have to be sent immediately for the laboratory analysis; after the confirmation of the commercial sterility, the quality control team, through a document, releases and authorizes the commercialization of these products; 15) Secondary Packaging: After the product is released by the quality control team, it is transported in cages to the secondary packaging room, where the trays are placed inside the display boxes that will be used for the exposition and sale of the products.
 2. The method for producing ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray according to claim 1, characterized in that the flowchart related to the packages follow the following steps: A) primary packaging (included in step 11): A1) receipt; A2) inspection; A3) storage; A4) re-inspection before its application in step 11). B) Secondary packaging (included in step 15); B1) receipt; B2) inspection; B3) storage; B4) re-inspection before its application in step 15).
 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein step 5 is characterized in that the grinder is made of stainless steel 304, with sanitary finishing; said grinder being also provided with equipment capable to separate the nerves and cartilage of the meat, thus resulting in a first quality product.
 4. The method according to claim 1, wherein step 6 is characterized in that the continuous cooker comprises an internally heated conveying thread made of stainless steel 304, with devices for automatically adjusting the speed and temperature.
 5. The method according to claim 1, wherein step 6.1 is characterized in that after the water is captured in the artesian wells, it is transferred to the company's reservoirs, where it is chlorinated through a chlorine dispenser, a model provided with a peristaltic pump; the water goes then toward a polishing filter, a polypropylene filter (a 50 micron filtering element), and then the water dechlorination process is started, through activated coal Gr (Removal of Chlorine through a coal filter) and then transferred to a polishing filter, a polypropylene filter (a 10 micron filter element); a number of controls are carried out while the water is treated, thus fulfilling all the effective regulations in force as well as all the internal programs, thus assuring a high quality product; between the analyses carried out, we have: Microbiological control of the output water; control of the active coal efficiency, among others.
 6. The method according to claim 1, wherein step 8 is characterized in that the mixer is made of stainless steel 304, with sanitary finishing, provided with load sensors, and thus being able to indicate precisely the amount ground meat inside the mixer; on the other hand, the load cells will interrupt immediately the product input inside the mixer, closing the gates of the silo when the optimum amount is reached.
 7. The method according to claim 1, wherein step 8.1 is characterized in that the mixer (8) requires a CPU so that all the steps of this process for mixing the seasonings can be carried out very precisely, including, among same; Mixing Time, Propellers Speed, Propellers Reverse Time, Discharge Gates Opening Speed, Propellers Angle Shift for Discharging, among others.
 8. The method according to claim 1, wherein step 9 is characterized in that the roaster uses a tambler shaped device, which device is provided with an infrared lighting system, actuated by a CPU responsible for the control of all the variables, such, as for example: rotation of the tambler, power of the lights, speed and amount of the input air, speed and amount of the output air, among others.
 9. End product according to claim 1, characterized in that the end product of the method comprises a package containing a serving of ready-to-be-consumed room temperature stable ground, cooked, and seasoned beef that is vacuum packed in a plastic tray that does not require refrigeration, being ready to be consumed or heated. 